The unredeemed nations: the Taiwanese film KANO and its trans-border reception

Abstract

ABSTRACTTaiwanese film KANO recounts the passage of a mixed-race baseball team to Japan’s Koshien Tournament during the colonial era of the 1930s. Its release evoked in both Taiwan and Japan critical responses in view of its rosy depiction of colonial modernity. Through analysing the film’s text and reviews in both Taiwan and Japan, we identify KANO as a “post-national” cinematic event. Its inviting nostalgic invocation of Japanese colonialism at the civilian level has launched divergent discourses on colonial legacies in the contemporary re/making of national identities, reflecting on the post-colonial socio-cultural conditions facing both Taiwan and Japan. We found that KANO in Taiwan instigated a re-examination of the state’s role in crafting the foundational myth of baseball as a “national” sport. Furthermore, the film brought on schemes of othering in which two national others were distinguished to manifest Taiwan subjectivity: Japanese colonialism versus Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, KANO in Japan was stripped of its colonial connotation. Its honouring of juvenile devotion to baseball was employed as a psychic introjection of Japanese-ness, which many considered losing in the globalizing social milieu.